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Thursday, May 19, 2016

The damp and chilly conditions proved no impediment to underdogs Thursday in NCAA Division I women's Sweet Sixteen action in Tulsa, with three of the first four matches played resulting in the lower seed advancing.

Due to rain in Tulsa, which started after the 9 a.m. matches had finished, two matches were sent to Oklahoma State's indoor facility, with Texas and No. 8 seed Pepperdine and Georgia Tech and No. 4 seed Ohio State heading for night matches in Stillwater, while No. 1 Cal and No. 16 Texas Tech and No. 5 Georgia and No. 12 Oklahoma State will be playing night matches in Tulsa's indoor facility. Because those finishes will be so late, I will post the results of those matches here Friday morning, before the start of the men's Sweet Sixteen, so check back then.

Virginia, the No. 14 seed, won the doubles point from No. 3 seed North Carolina, only the third doubles point the Tar Heels had lost all year, but UNC won five first sets in singles, so that deficit didn't seem insurmountable. But Virginia, who had lost twice to North Carolina this year, fought back, with wins from Meghan Kelley and crucially, Stephanie Nauta. Nauta dropped the first set to freshman Jessie Aney at line 3, but the senior posted the Cavaliers third point with a 3-6, 6-0, 6-1 win.

North Carolina had gotten wins from Ashley Dai at 6 and Marika Akkerman at 5, but when Nauta won, UNC needed both matches still going. Whitney Kay served for the match at 6-4, 5-4 against Virginia's Julia Elbaba at line 2, but Elbaba broke and won the subsequent tiebreaker to push it to a third set. At line 1, Virginia's Danielle Collins forced a third set in her match with Hayley Carter, but it was Carter that got the break in the third set, a break that she held for a 5-4 lead. Elbaba had to save three break points to keep her break lead over Kay at 4-3, while Carter had three match points at line 1 when Elbaba completed her 4-6, 7-6 (2), 6-3 win with a break, giving Virginia a 4-2 win.

No. 7 Miami and No. 10 Michigan finished their doubles point outside, after one rain delay, with Michigan winning it, while No. 2 seed Florida and No. 15 seed Stanford never started outside, playing their entire match, uninterrupted, indoors at Tulsa.

Just as they had in a 4-3 loss to Stanford in Palo Alto, Florida won the doubles point, but they couldn't put a quick second point on the board, with Florida's Anna Danilina failing to serve out the match at 5-4 and 6-5 in the second set against Melissa Lord at line 6. Carol Zhao of Stanford brought the Cardinal even with a win over Brooke Austin, and Caroline Lampl put Stanford up 2-1 with a win at line 5 over Josie Kuhlman. Kourtney Keegan and Brianna Morgan gave Florida a 3-2 lead with wins at lines 4 and 3, but Lord completed her comeback over Danilina at 6 to make it 3-3. By that time, Taylor Davidson had taken the second set over Belinda Woolcock at line 2, their third set would decide the match. It wasn't the best of third sets, with five breaks to start, and only one hold total, with points more often decided by errors than by winners. Davidson served for the match at 5-2, but two doubles faults from 40-30 gave Woolcock a chance to get back in it, but more unforced errors in her next service game gave Stanford another 4-3 victory over the Gators.

Miami and Michigan then took the courts to finish their match, and that too came down to the final match on, this time at line 1, to decide it. Michigan took a 3-0 lead with wins by Kate Fahey and Mira Ruder-Hook at 3 and 5, but Miami came back with wins by Sinead Lohan at line 2, Ana Madcur at 6 and Silvia Fuentes at 4. Miami's Stephanie Wagner had won the first set from Ronit Yurovsky in a tiebreaker, but Yurovsky forced a third set, breaking Wagner when she served at 4-5, just as Fuentes had tied it up.

Like the Florida - Stanford decider, that third set started off with breaks, three in a row, but Yurovsky held for 3-1 and played aggressive and composed tennis from then on, while Wagner committed too many unforced errors to pressure Yurovsky. Once Wagner lost the fifth game, after having a 40-0 lead, Yurovsky was completely in control and she closed out the 6-7(3), 6-4, 6-1 win. Michigan will play Stanford in Saturday's quarterfinals, the first time in program history that the Wolverines have advanced to the Elite Eight.

Chirico and Min both came from a set down to post their wins, with Chirico, the top seed, beating Andrea Hlavackova of the Czech Republic 4-6, 6-4, 6-3, and Min taking out Ysaline Bonaventure of Belgium 3-6, 6-4, 7-5. Bonaventure served for the match at 5-4 in the third set. Min will play Lucie Hradecka of the Czech Republic and Chirico will play 2011 ITF World Junior Champion Irina Khromacheva of Russia, the No. 24 seed. Jennifer Brady defeated Beatriz Haddad Maia of Brazil 6-3, 6-4 and will play veteran Daniela Hantuchova of Slovakia for her first slam main draw appearance. Sachia Vickery defeaed Cindy Burger of the Netherlands 6-2, 5-7, 6-2 and will face wild card Fiona Ferro of France in Friday's final round of qualifying.

No. 29 seed Donaldson, whose did not play Wednesday due to rain, beat Axel Michon of France 6-3, 7-6(7) and will play No. 14 seed Nikoloz Basilashvili of Georgia. Donaldson and Basilashvili met last year in the final round of the French Open qualifying, with Basilashvili taking a 6-2, 4-6, 6-2 decision.

Frances Tiafoe led Adrian Ungur of Romania 6-4, 1-0 serving, but ended up losing his final round qualifying match to the veteran 4-6, 6-2, 6-4.

Rain kept any singles matches from being played at the Grade A Trofeo Bonfiglio in Milan, with two rounds now scheduled for Friday. Doubles were played indoors, with Ulises Blanch and his partner Juan Carlos Aguilar of Bolivia and Claire Liu and her partner Charlotte Robillard-Millette of Canada the only US players advancing to the semifinals.

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comments:

With their respective lineups, the most disappointing and underachieving college women's teams are: Duke, Florida, Kentucky, and Southern California.

The teams that did the most with their lineups and overachieving college women's teams are: UVA, LSU, South Carolina, and Texas.

Definitely an interesting discussion on who does the best job for the talent they have. It's easy to be ranked high with a fully loaded roster, like Duke and Florida but to maximize your team's potential, you have to know what you are doing.

The upsets keep pouring into the NCAA Championships. Congratulations to Cal for beating TCU.

I thought TCU set themselves up as a target with the ridiculous hats they are wearing. Coach Roditi needs to take a page from Coach Dick Gould to keep a low profile and put the pressure on their opponents. But they have a really good team and fought through some tough 4-3 matches this year. I give them a lot of credit but they shot themselves in the foot.

Florida loss 3 matches; two to Stanford; One to Cal. Hard to say they underachieved. Cal seeded #1; Standford would have been much higher had they played there best in college matches. I have heard coaches say with "their" lineup Stanford is the best team in college. The next 3 matches might confirm. If I looked correctly they have a 10 and 14 or 6 between them in the finals.

Kentucky no opinion.

I am biased but GT beat 2 of your 3 over acheivers and lost 4 - 2 to LSU in the National Indoor 2nd round. Finished 3rd in ACC. And that with a senior limited to line 3 doubles with injuries on a team with only 5 top college doubles players.

I forgot my under achiever year in and year out. Miami hands down. The worst behaving coach I have witnessed on the courts (UGA's JW a close 2nd; arguing line calls from several courts away?). In all honesty I have a huge issue with their recruiting. I support Title 9, I follow/watch women's tennis, but should foreign players count? Offer a scholly all you want but don't count as Title 9 funding. In my opinion Title 9 accounting should accrue for US players only. Just one idiots opinion.

U&O, how is USCal underachieving. Have you compared their lineups in recent years against star-studded Stanford, UCLA and Cal.? They actually won plenty of Pac 12s recently. And Xepoleas did't play this NCAA either. Likewise, Capra was absent for Duke.

I see no big difference between LSU, USCarolina and UK.

And 314159xdia, I think Miami is actually doing a pretty good job considering all those top USA players going to UF lol.

TCU got Beat by a Very Good CAL Team....the "Roditi" hat had nothing to do with the match. Maybe the hat is a problem you have with TCU's Coach. Congrats to Cal. Good luck in the next round. Put your private beef to bed...goodnight:)

Agree with Another Upset, but maybe not just the hats but a season of self promotion sure did get them a target on their back from most teams. It's actually a pretty decent brotherhood out there, even between guys on different teams, but I must say, it seems lot of them were hoping TCU would lose. So they were doing something that motivated people to dislike them to that point. Historically, the quietest (and most confident) coaches are often the winning-est - Dick Gould, Peter Smith, etc. They let their teams do the talking.

Florida didnt underachieve. Stanford only lost 1 match all season when their #1 Zhao played, a 4-3 loss to Cal. Zhao spent most of the spring playing professional events. Stanford's ranking is way out of whack. That is a strong lineup and Zhao is one of the favorites in the NCAA singles.

Whoever said UVA did the most with their lineup overachieving. I want what you're smoking. NCAA champ, former number 1 in college Elbaba. Perennial top 30 Nauta. I'd say a coach getting the absolute least out of talent is where they qualify

If it was someone other than Roditi, people would say "what a great use of social media by a coach to reach his team's fans." The asst from Ok State does videos all the time for their athletic dept and nobody says a word. Who cares. I want to hear after the match what the coach has to say. TCU just cut out the reporter asking questions.

As for the hats. Jeeeeez who cares. A Texas school decides to rock cowboy hats. How dare they. Somebody alert the media. USC freshmen wore superhero costumes for the flight to Tulsa. Fun police would say "how dare they make a mockery of this trip to the national championships". But instead crickets....